Sorting Demonstrator

See COPYING for details on distributing this program.

Installing sortdemo
See the INSTALL file for installation instructions.
Running sortdemo

sortdemo takes three arguments.

(a) Sort type

sortdemo 0.2 supports the following sort types

     s, selection : selection sort
     i, insertion : insertion sort
     b1, bubble1  : bubble sort
     b2, bubble2  : bubble sort with a flag
     b3, bubble3  : two way bubble sort (shaker sort) with a flag
     b4, bubble4  : enhanced two way bubble sort with a flag
     q, quick     : quick sort

(b) Initial data

This describes the nature of the initial list

       s, sorted          : sorted
       re, reverse        : sorted in the reverse order
       ra, random         : random
       as, almost-sorted  : almost sorted
       ar, almost-reverse : almost reverse

For example, to do a bubble sort with a flag (b2) for a random data set of 20 items, type

sortdemo b2 random 20

3. Text output

Two files (by default unsorted.d and sorted.d - see sortdemo.h), will be written that contain the sorted and unsorted data.

4. Graphic output

Each step of the sorting will be written to a file starting from sort00000.gif and go on with the names sort00001.gif, sort00002.gif etc. The currently active item(s) will be shown in one color and swappings in another. Also, in some cases, only a part of the list is highlighted (e.g. - in quick sort, the items not belonging to the current list is de-highlighted).

If you are impatient to see the result, type

animate -delay 100 sort*.gif

to see how the sorting routine is going. If you want to produce an animated gif (say, to publish on the web), use convert utility

convert -delay 500 sort*.gif quicksortanimation.gif

Notice that you should have ImageMagic to run animate and convert commands.

Since animate and convert are taking too much memory, it would be a good idea to convert the series of image files to an mpeg. One simple way to do this is to use the MPEG video decoder and encoder. It also comes with RedHat Powertools.

!!! W A R N I N G !!!

Don't make the list size too large. The convert and animate program may glob a large amount of memory and may disturb the other processes going on. Generally 20-30 seems to be okey with 64 MB.

5. Common Pitfalls

Always remove the old gif files before running sortdemo.

6. sortdemo Home Page

Visit http://www.lklug.pdn.ac.lk/software/sortdemo/ for more details and examples.

7. Work in progress

To add lists with gaussian random variables
To demonstate the use of tempory variables

Anuradha Ratnaweera

Dept. of Computer Sciences
Faculty of Engineering
University of Peradeniya
Peradeniya 20400
Sri Lanka

Send your comments to anuradha@cs.pdn.ac.lk